Thursday, May 07, 2009

A Family is Any Two or More People Who Love the Government

HvB emphasizes the point that, while we can talk about abstract and concrete, we can't actually separate them. In fact, it's pure abstraction to think that we ever could. In other words, it's not only a pure abstraction to think that there are only universals, but equally abstract to think that there are nothing but concrete instances.

As it pertains to man, "he realizes his entire, one-of-a-kind uniqueness exclusively within the universal possibility of which he is a single instance." And yet, "the concept of man cannot be abstracted in such a way as to leave the individual person's being outside its conceptual content."

This is a truly strange but unavoidable paradox, and as we have previously discussed in the context of Letter IX of MOTT, it is only definitively resolved in the Incarnation. As a matter of fact, it was in reading that particular chapter that I was finally struck by the intellectual heft of Christianity. I saw in an instant how it doesn't just reconcile our spiritual and existential dilemmas, but resolves our cognitive ones in the bargain.

You could say that in man, abstract and concrete are separate and distinct, and yet, "not-two," neither to be confused nor radically separated. Therefore, no man is an a posteriori "synthesis of universal human nature and individual personality" (HvB). Rather, it is in the nature of humanness "to be realized from instance to instance only as an individual person."

Looked at in this manner, there is no such thing as human nature, only instances of it. But there can be no individual unless it is an instance of the universal. Here again, this is a critical point to bear in mind, because there can be no person except in light of the Person. You could say that mere "subjectivities" are transformed into persons insofar as they participate in the Incarnation.

This has obvious political implications, and, depending upon how you come down on this issue, it will determine your allegiance. Suffice it so say that an ontology of persons is absolutely incompatible with leftist statism or collectivism. This is why we can call the latter "ontological heresies," since they undermine the foundation of human possibility, and human possibility is the very bridge between appearance and reality, absolute and relative, time and eternity, Creator and creation.

In short, if you get your anthropology wrong, then everything else follows, from cosmology to politics. It is the error from which your system cannot recover, no matter how much "truth" you pile on top of it.

O my leftist friends, hear me now, believe me later!

It is more than a mere cliché to point out that leftists love mankind, while conservative liberals love people. I know that mankind stinks. What could be more obvious? Haven't they ever read a history book? And yet, I know equally well that people are beautiful. This is one of the reasons why I am hopeless about the world, and yet, not at all pessimistic. You will note that the leftist is the opposite: full of childish hopeychangefullness, and yet, as cynical, dour, jaded, and pessimistic as can be. This attitude is not "accidental" but essential.

For the hysterical/angry left, it is always "the end of the world," unless you allow them to "make it right." But for us, the world cannot be made right, only the person can be. For the left, the person cannot be made right, only the State. If only the state is big enough and coercive enough, it will somehow heal man. It will remove the greed from free enterprise, evil from the hearts of terrorists, and "unempathic" justice from the legal system.

We know that this is folly on stilts, doomed to fail before it gets underway. Again, the anthropology is all wrong: as with Darwinism, good theory, wrong species. This is why leftist ideas are always shovel ready. They emanate from a kind of intrinsic and perennial madness (AKA, the ineveateapple "fall") that is not susceptible to "fine-tuning," only a truly radical metanoia. The cure for sleep is waking up, not a government program for free sleeping pills.

Man cannot become who he is in the absence of the interior collective, beginning with that first collective known as "mother-infant," or, more generally, "family." Now, why do you suppose that the left would be so intrinsically hostile to the family? Why would they want to redefine marriage, or replace fathers with the federal government, or embrace kooky man-hating feminism, or promote (as opposed to tolerate; old-fashioned liberal tolerance is the new hate) homosexuality?

Yesterday, there was an article in USA Today entitled Marriage Gap Could Sway Elections (HT Dennis Prager). The implications of this article are so profound, and yet, I seriously doubt that it will get any play from the moonstream media.

The article is very short and rather matter of fact, but extraordinary in its ramifications. The most amazing statistic in the piece is that Republicans control 49 of the 50 districts with the highest rates of married people, whereas Democrats represent all 50 districts with the highest rates of adults who have never married.

As for how this played out in the last presidential election, President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 points among married people, whereas Kerry beat President Bush by 18 percentage points among unmarried people. If I recall correctly, the gaps were even wider than that regarding religiosity. Something like 90% of irreligious people vote Democrat.

Let’s analyze this situation as a leftist would. For a leftist, free will is a dubious construct. Unlike classical liberals, they reject the idea that essence determines existence. Rather, they believe that existence determines essence. This is the whole basis of their class consciousness, their victimology, and their identity politics. For a leftist, someone is black before they are a human being, which is why they believe it should be against the law to think in a color-blind manner (hence their desire for government enforced racial quotas).

As we mentioned yesterday, leftists believe that poverty causes crime, or that America (or Israel) causes Islamist terror (instead of bad values causing crime or an evil theology causing terror). Likewise, if we engage in harsh interrogation of terrorists, we are exactly like them -- an abstraction that ignores, precisely, who we actually are. But that doesn't matter. For the leftist, only the abstraction is real, like "Democrats are for the little guy," irrespective of how much contempt they have for him.

The bottom lyin' for the leftist is that even our philosophical beliefs are a result of class. I believe what I believe only because I am a whiteuppermiddleclasspriviigedheteronormativemale, whereas women or blacks are from “oppressed” classes (oppressed by me and my kind, of course), so that their consciousness and interests are entirely different. "Perception is reality."

Back around the time of the O.J. trial, for example, I heard black (actually, leftist -- their race is irrelevant) legal scholars argue that O.J. Simpson was literally not gulity if black people believed he wasn't. This is called "critical race theory," and it is actually taught in American classrooms.

Since Democrat fortunes are so directly tied to the devaluation and destruction of marriage, is it any wonder that, in their own class interest, they would adopt polices that are harmful to marriage and the family? That is, the more people get married and have children, the less success Democrats are going to have at the polls.

How do they accomplish their goal of weakening marriage and the family? In any number of ways. In a social welfare system, the government replaces the family, so there is no need to get married. We see this even more dramatically in western Europe, where marriage has become a quaint thing of the past, to such an extent hat these nations are dying, economically, spiritually, and demographically.

And of course, this is how liberals took the wrecking ball to the black family in America, causing untold damage to both blacks and to the victims of their consequent cultural pathology (e.g., skyrocketing crime rates after instituting various “oh, Great" Society programs.

All wise men know that women exert a civilizing influence on men, so that when women give up their “gate keeper” role in converting boys to responsible men (i.e., sharing their bodies with boys), the culture in question will produce uncivilized boys in the bodies of men. Why grow up? Thus, ovary tower feminist doctrine -- which taught that there is no difference between men and women, and that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” -- simply produced pathetically de-feminized women and de-masculinized men. It also promoted the crazy idea that single mothers could raise boys just as effectively as married couples, ignoring the basic truth that only a man (either real or symbolic) can raise a man.

The destruction of the family also explains Democrats' desire for higher taxes. After all, the higher the taxes, the harder it is to support a family. But the government will be your family, so it doesn’t matter to them. It would also explain their jihad against Walmart, a place where people with modest incomes can purchases necessities, including food and medications, at rock bottom prices.

Liberals will respond, “We’re the real pro-family party. We’re for homosexual marriage!” Ahem. First of all, homosexuals are already allowed to get married, marriage being defined as a union between a man and a woman. What liberals favor is the thoroughly Orwellian notion of redefining -- in a way both magical and totalitarian -- a word and a reality with which they take issue.

My desire to remain faithful to the dictionary has nothing to do with homosexuals, much less “homophobia.” Rather, it has to do with a clear understanding of the very basis of civilization and therefore humanness. Civilization is not built from the top down, as leftist social imagineers would have you believe. Rather, it is built from the bottom up, brick by brick, family by family, the unit of civilization.

Put another way, leftists think they are merely rearranging furniture on the top floor of civilization, when they are blasting away at the foundation of the building. Being ahistorical, leftists cannot but help being oblivious to the forces that underlie history.

We can all see the damage to the black family produced by 50 years of liberal ideas. What if we were to try 50 years of rigorously applied conservative ideas? That is, what if we try to inculcate the same values in black culture that, say, the Mormons do in Provo, Utah, or that Asians seem to do to everywhere in America? Stay in school, work hard, get married, don't have children out of wedlock. Ironically, this was part of the strategy of the original liberal civil rights leaders of just a couple generations ago. Now, groups like the NAACP are plainly no longer liberal but thoroughly infused with leftist ideology that promotes dysfunction and dependence.

Why? Why are they so averse to individualism and self-reliance? In order to advance their own class -- not ethnic -- interest. What class is that? The class of people who gain power as a result of having fewer families and more dependent and self-defeating victims. Democrats.

*****

What can I say? It kept my interest to the end. Perhaps I'm easily amused. But this post is now long enough, so it is officially over.

48 Comments:

Utterly unsurprising. People who argued against gay marriage in part because they were concerned that polygamy would follow were decried for using straw man slippery slope arguments, and yet, of course, here we are.

Interesting, too, how there's a whole new language that springs up to classify all the minutiae of these different types of relations, which all enlightened people are supposed to know and understand (and which, frankly, provides far too much information as to the exact nature of the relationships, imo). It's not just a threesome, it's either a triad, or bigamy (but don't you dare call the one the other, or you'll be offering a grave insult).

Then there's this:

That said, Valerie White, executive director of the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education Fund, a legal defense fund for people with alternative sexual expression in Sharon, Mass., believes that triads are actually great ways to raise a family. "Years ago children didn’t get raised in diads (traditional couples), they got raised with grandparents and aunts and uncles—it was much looser and more village like," says White. "I think a lot more people are finding that polyamory is a way to recapture that kind of support.”

Funny, I’ve been going through MOTT the past couple of days too, related to the last couple of posts. If I had to guess I would have said you were thinking about the same cards as me – except I was seeing parallels in the letters Death and Judgment. In both of these letters UF speaks of “the person” as the indestructible kernel, incarnation - resurrection, and intimate experience.

Andie, in turn, began noticing the quality of the relationship between Larry and Rachel. “They didn’t just go to those meetings and do what happens to other poly partners, that they disappear from each other,” she says. “They stayed together.”

In other words, it's unusual for "poly" partners to actually act like partners. Doesn't sound like a healthy type of relationship to me.

It occurs to me that it is absolutely critical for us to be trangressive, i.e., to transgress and break through all the stultifying boundaries of thought imposed by the left. I think a lot of the talk about the obnoxiousness of the internet is confused with this need to speak plain truth to these totalitarians. There can be no leftism in the absence of some kind of totalitarian thought control, so it must be constantly challenged, or else it becomes "normative."

Thanks, Bob. That one really hurt (in a good way!). It's going to take me awhile to digest the first six paragraphs of this post - it explains so much in so few words! I can feel it sinking in slowly, connecting dots that were previously unconnected. Ouch! I am really looking forward to your next book, but I know it will come when we're all ready for it. Thanks for keeping on the Path, Bob. It inspires me to do the same.

It seems to me that even these polygamists would find some form of a relationship unacceptable – father marrying his son? Keep going if not. And then, why not?I don't think an answer such as, "no one would want to do that" qualifies as an answer.

Sal,for several years, my family lived with my maternal grandmother. To say it it didn't work out well would be a massive understatement of epic proportions. As to the whole village premise, I'm not sure just how healthy that really is. There may be some benefits, but how can it generally be a good thing for a child to not properly bond with its own parents and vice versa? To be, essentially, community property?

The last group in that article was three men who live together, one of whom fathered quadruplets with a lesbian in a relationship, so apparently those kids recognize at least two women as mother and three men as father. Maybe they'll grow up just fine, perfectly well adjusted, but I think it'll be quite the challenge for them.

Bob, I saw that one yesterday. This whole Chrysler situation is deeply disturbing, and I admit maybe a bit personally so, given DH's profession. It's highly unlikely they'd take on a client that would attract the White House's attention, but you never know, and death threats are no joke. But more generally, if this is how the country is to be run now, how do we stop it? Once the mechanisms of not just general corruption but outright thuggery are in place, how do we get that toothpaste back in the tube, even if we manage to throw the bums out with the next round of elections?

You cannot get the truthpaste back in the tube. The situation is, and always has been, hopeless. All the more reason to do the right thing for its own sake, not for some illusory outcome. As always, participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. It's the best revenge.

Anyone read “Ship of Gold”?It’s the story of SS Central America. It was caught in a hurricane on the East coast full of people (families) and their hard-earned gold, coming back from California during the gold rush. They were taking on water at an alarming rate. Incredible story. They were throwing their gold overboard after having slaved years away from their families to get it. All able bodies set to a bucket brigade but they knew they were taking on water faster than they could do anything about it. The bailing went on for days, if I recall correctly. It was a lost cause. The ship would eventually sink from under them, which it did with 400 plus on board. But they kept bailing until their arms fell off. Men gave out. It was a lost cause before it actually became one. But they couldn’t not fight the flooding.

“All the more reason to do the right thing for its own sake, not for some illusory outcome.”

Off topic again, I'm in the midst of reading an old scifi book DH picked up a while back, The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt, and just came across a raccoonish passage that just has to be shared:

"Listen to me, Goodwin." He took up his walk impatiently. "I've all the love and admiration for you in the world; but this place has got your nerve. Hereafter one Larry O'Keefe, of Ireland and the little old U.S.A., leads this party. Nix on the tremolo stop, nix on the superstition! I'm the works. Get me?" "Yes, I get you!" I exclaimed testily enough. "But to use your own phrase, kindly can the repeated references to superstition." "Why should!?" He was almost wrathful. "You scientific people build up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and don't come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes - why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation of atoms ever gathered at the exact mathematical centre of Missouri, has more blind faith than a dervish, and more credulity, more superstition, than a cross-eyed smoke beating it past a country graveyard in the dark of the moon!" "Larry!" I cried, dazed. "Olaf's no better," he said. "But I can make allowances for him. He's a sailor. No, sir. What this expedition needs is a man without superstition. And remember this. The leprechaun promised I'd have a full warning before anything happened..."

Polygamy will definitely be next.Unlike same sex "marriage," an utterly laughable novelty, polygamy has been widely practiced for millenia. Besides, what kind of BIGOT would dare prefer the Vatican to Mecca.......or, for that matter, classical Rome to Carthage?!

Come to think of it, incestuous marriage has been practiced in some civilizations. Who are we to inflict our Eurocentric views on others and make them feel like "second class citizens?"

Yeah, it's pretty hopeless.

"All the more reason to do the right thing for its own sake, not for some illusory outcome." That hits the nail on the head, Petey.

I read the story at the link you left for polygamy. What was described is something more than one man marrying two or more women. I believe what was laid out there is called "polyamory" as it can involve any combination of men and women.

The thing that struck me about the story was how insanity can be made to appear rational.

The other thing that struck me was a sudden raft of memories going back many years of people warning that relaxation of laws regarding divorce would lead ultimately to societal chaos. Those people were derided and ridiculed as prudes and puritanical fuddy-duddies.

Until rather recently I did not take seriously enough the constant warnings and condemnations of sexual immorality spread through the scriptures. It always seemed to me that other forms of sin (like the lust for power or money) were more serious. I now see I was quite wrong about this and that sexual immorality has a way of poisoning everything else. I am now think that, after pride, lust is the most corrosive of the deadly sins.

Cory said:The thing that struck me about the story was how insanity can be made to appear rational.

It's The Inversion again. You are right. I saw yet another article today on the Miss California slagging. The MSM always accuses her of being the one to stir up controversy, not the creeps who attack her. Dennis Prager played a cut of some commentators on a television news program the other day- it might have been Kieth Olbermann but I'm not sure- anyway, they were just savaging the girl. It was so fag-bitchy vicious, that it just made me sick to hear.

Another thing I notice is that there are those who laugh at and ridicule the very notion of the chain of cause and effect. In the homemade world in which they live apparently things "just happen" and there is no discernable chain of causation.

My father had a half-sister who, in the mid 1920's, scratched her hand on a rusty nail. Within two weeks she was dead from "blood poisoning". In the world of the pagan there would be no link between the scratch and the infection that killed her. The death would have been imputed to evil spirits or a curse or mysterious vapors. Or it "just happened" and who knows why? Must be the will of the gods.

Just so I can look back over my 61 years and see a rather clear chain leading through the repeal of adultery statutes and blue laws and the adoption of no fault divorce to the situation we have today. This would be only one thread in the gradual loss of cultural restraints and the abandonment of these was but one symptom of a much broader malady. But the chain is there - one of many and probably not the least of them.

Speaking of the loss of cultural restraints, I just saw this plug for an article linked at the top of the Yahoo home page:

"Navigating the dating world requires a few must-haves — like the perfect third-date outfit."

The third date, of course, being the one where "ladies" are expected to put out already. There is an underlying implication in the article, too, that women only really need men to scratch an itch and give stereo advice.

Again, there are so many things wrong here. Half of which I probably wouldn't have recognized myself, even a few years ago.

Just popped over to see what's going on in this part of the cosmos and boy am I glad I did. Great post! Hope everyone is doing well and has more than change! Ugh, it's been so depressing these last 100 days or so, at least reading the news, but life is still good around here.

I happened to attend a lecture on Evolution by Dr. Johansen at the Natural Museum of History. I really went to see Wolfmother play after but I thought why not?. They were amazing and worth having to sit through one of the most unintellectual lectures by a professional intellectual, I could have ever imagine. The Dr. was a classical elite libtard! Instead of discussing in detail how he found Lucy, he babbled on about evolution with jokes from The New Yorker and the obligatory Reagan and Bonzo picture. (I thought he looked very handsome by the way at that age and throughout his life...) No pictures of Obama were shown, but that would then make the Dr. racist, I suppose. ha ha! It was so disappointing and underwhelming. But he did mention that contrary to popular opinion the cradle of humanity is not the white man in Europe but located in Africa, the dark continent. He talked of evolution as not being a belief but it just is, ya know like gravity. But of course he never proved it, only gravity by dropping a cup. It was very dramatic and the audience gaped in amazement and chuckled. Students from USC were either required or got extra credit of some sort to attend the lecture. No wonder people are so stupid after attending college these days! I probably should have walked out but it was another 3 hours until Wolfmother played. The Museum of Natural History is a really nice museum. They have a great gem room and room full of stuffed birds. How people can't see the beautiful, intricately diverse yet patterned and organized creation baffles me. It's something fun to do when in downtown LA. (besides trapeze! ;) )

"All wise men know that women exert a civilizing influence on men, so that when women give up their “gate keeper” role in converting boys to responsible men (i.e., sharing their bodies with boys), the culture in question will produce uncivilized boys in the bodies of men. Why grow up? Thus, ovary tower feminist doctrine -- which taught that there is no difference between men and women, and that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” -- simply produced pathetically de-feminized women and de-masculinized men. It also promoted the crazy idea that single mothers could raise boys just as effectively as married couples, ignoring the basic truth that only a man (either real or symbolic) can raise a man."

It is most definitely the case, that a women is what takes a boy and makes, or at least clarifies the course which must be travelled in order to become, a Man. It is how (and why) a boy learns to merge his urges with his ideals, giving them the rocket fuel to lift off, to lift himself up by his own bootstraps, upwards into manhood - the desire to be seen as worthy in her eyes, to become the heroic image she has of you, is intoxicating, purifying and maturing.

If... If she has moral standards which she expects and requires of you, in order to be worthy of her attention. If not... if she doesn't, if she expects not moral strength but physical displays, then moral strength is of no use, heck, you just need to glitter and flatter, tell her she's hotter than bimbo b, don't need no ideals, no standards, "heck babe... it's just physical pleasure after all and man-o-man can I give you a dose o' dat!"

Yes! Seriously, if nothing else, it imaginatively told the tale of what goodness and great deeds required, and what would eliminate them.

There's a passage in there, where the rabbits that are on the quest for a new land, stop at a warren of what can best be described as sophisticated, metro-sexual, pomo, type rabbits. The questing rabbits, thinking they are being good guests, present their Virgil like bard rabbit to regale their hosts with a tale, a very hero-tale, crafty Odysseus type tale, which they are stunned is not received well by their hosts – ‘how skilled these citified rabbits must be, to think nothing of that, what a tale we must be in store for!’ they think. Then the pomo rabbit's begin a very modernish, meaningless hash of feelings and shades of despairing lyrics with no clear point. The visiting rabbit's bard is appalled, even has if I remember right (was about 25 yrs ago that I read it), a panic attack & vision, seizure and urgently tells his leader to 'Get us away from here! The Horror!'

Cory said “Another thing I notice is that there are those who laugh at and ridicule the very notion of the chain of cause and effect.”

That is the entry wound of skepticism and the legitimization of believing, via professed disbelief, whatever you want to assert as being so. Thank you so much Mr. Hume. And it is the real source of, or if not source, the method, which ensures the slide such as which followed the lifting of restrictions on divorce laws, etc. The elimination of facts, commitments and standards, is more than anything else, a way to pull down and discredit and discard higher truths, and the ‘shackles’ of principles, values and standards – for whatever floats your boat. And of course, onto that boat, no need to go two by two, three’s, four’s, Octets… the more the merrier!

The question is, what is/are the right thing(s) that are to be done under the current circumstances.

These people of the Left are a wildly destructive minority but a minority nonetheless. This is not like the '40s when we were up against the most formidable industrial killing beast ever. The adversaries (It's really just one adversary, I know.)are/is harder to identify clearly, but they are seriously outgunned. And they don't even know that. We are still very much a Christian nation, and they don't even seem to know that either.

I was told the other day about the success of the "40 days for life" project. Prayer groups outside of Planned Parenthood offices every Lent for the past few years, a tactic that originated in a kitchen somewhere with two women. Apparently, some PP centers have had to close as a result, and it definitely must drive them crazy.

We need a counter-terrorism strategy and movement and we need it soon. Maybe that's it. Pit the real adversaries against each other, right out in the open.

That's encouraging, Maineman. Thanks. Exactly - the Light burns, but it has to come out from hiding.

"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."Matt 5 (and so many more)

Yes, it requires simply speaking out, standing up for, and doing, what you know to be right and true, to make a difference.

Taking your kid who swiped a couple signs for fastfood joints because he & his friends thought it would be a fun prank and look good on their band practice room wall... walking him back into those joints to ask for the manager, return them, say you’re sorry, ask if there's any charge he should reimburse him for(and particularly fine way to spend the evening of a very long long day)... that makes a difference. To your kid, the manager, the people sitting around... a difference is made.

Note, a 'difference' doesn't mean fixing the current issue. Speaking out against an unfair tax, will not make your taxes immediately lower.

Letting your child’s teacher know that their math textbook is crap... eh... less than optimal... and why, will not put a better one into immediate use.

But it will make a difference. It will make a difference in the only place it really counts, in people’s minds, their understanding of what is acceptable, ok, good, bad.

It's a slow process, and it takes innumerable small differences to effect visible changes, but that is the ONLY way things will ever truly change. To bother objecting that it takes too long is as sensible as not beginning the long journey because it can't be completed in a single step.

Make a difference. If you want real change, change that is believable, make a difference.

julie said...Utterly unsurprising. People who argued against gay marriage in part because they were concerned that polygamy would follow were decried for using straw man slippery slope arguments, and yet, of course, here we are... .

We've been heading down this road for decades. The New Left (Bill Ayers et al), the elite population control advocates (Rockefeller, Scaiffe and Ford foundations et al), pro-promiscuity advocates (Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood) and certain wealthy elite white racists were among a number of groups advocating the abandonment of traditional Western marriage in one fashion or another since the 50s and 60s.

You will find that few homosexuals for instance will avail themselves of “gay marriage”. Those who do will most often remain highly promiscuous. The real motivation behind the “gay marriage” is to obtain social and legal ratification and validation for pathological behavior; and to mute and to delegitimize criticism and social restraint against the various pathological behaviors related to homosexual promiscuity. There seems to be an unquenchable need for validation! Moreover expect these political efforts to obtain legal validation and protection to extend to homosexual sexual “preference” for young boys who have entered puberty, highly desirable sexual objects for a many homosexuals.

There are other motivations too. There is a Gramscian drive to undermine Western democracy by undermining Western democracy's foundational institutions. There is also a vindictive spiteful aspect ; consider the monstrous Dr. Alfred Kinsey for example.

I have a suggestion for all. Next time you have a chance, run through mock Federal tax returns. Assume two adults with middle class incomes and two dependent children. Use the same assumed income amounts etc. Prepare mock Form 1040s using filing status: married filing a joint return with two dependents, married filing separately each with a dependent child, and two unmarried adults living together splitting household expenses and each filing as "head of household" with one dependent child. Then ponder the comparative results and consider American social policy as expressed through the Federal tax code for the last three or four decades.

While I agree with you on all you said, the source goes back much further than a few, or even five or six decades... check out the transcendentalist crowd which surrounded Emerson, they were already advocating much of the modern proregressive platform.

In every fundamental, the ills of modernity were first gathered and dark crystallized with Rousseau. If he didn't define it explicitly, he did implicitly.

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